metonomia

Saw Toy Story 3 again today, and I think I've pinpointed a tiny part of why it makes me cry like it does (I'm talking throat-constricting, tears rolling down face, trying not to sniffle too loudly bawling, here) - it makes me feel guilty for growing up. Not in a bad way - it's obviously all about how kids grow up but the love for toys and imagination goes on, and gets passed down, and our toys and our childhood games are always with us no matter what, but still...I think what it's making me feel is that by losing that utter glee in making up stories and not just using my toys and dolls to act them out but truly believing that said toys were alive, were really playing with me, were really there (I blame A Little Princess, which had me convinced for years that my dolls and stuffed animals came alive in my absence, and that imagination made things real.) - and you know, it's not really guilt as much as just sadness. I'm sad that I grew out of those days when a friend and I, or a brother and I, or just I by myself could spend hours entranced by the way my imagination could make inanimate objects come to such vivid life. I don't regret it, obviously, that I've grown up; it would be mostly bad if I didn't develop out of that child's mindset. But it is a bit sad. And so so so perfect. I cannot fathom how they've made such a beautiful and perfect world out of toys and childish jokes and then carried it forward with us as we've grown up. It's beautiful, and the people in charge of it are totally amazing.

Toy Story 3, I'm going to venture to say, is really about loss of innocence, and how it is not really lost but is simply buried under the cares of growing up, and we can always find it if we just look back fondly and give it a bit of a chance and dig out those old pictures and those old toys and share them with new young minds.

Also, unrelated but connected - having now seen the Narnia trailer on the big screen three times, I am very certain of one thing - that IS Peter on the beach with the young 'uns and Aslan and Reep in the shot in front of the wave-waterfall, just before the epic-walking shots of the Pevensies. So Peter and Susan are there in Aslan's Country at the end. I am baffled.

ETA: I'm a liar. The blond was making me think Peter, and the fact that in the foreground he looks taller than Ed, but it's actually Eustace there. Facepalm. But there are four shadows, so Caspian? And Reep is there. It's all so weeeeird.